Introduction: You’re about to listen to Spouse Hunting, the podcast that dares to ask the question, “Can I use the rules of real estate to find the love of my life?” And then has the audacity to answer, “Yes. Yes you can.”

I’m your host, Brian Belefant, Licensed Oregon Real Estate Broker. This is episode five.

Brian Belefant: Today we’re talking to Trina Brunk, Life Coach and Intuitive Consultant who does hypnotherapy and NLP, which is Neuro-Linguistic Programming, in case you don’t know. What does that mean, you ask? It means she uses her intuition –– and yours –– to help you get past the stuff that’s got you stuck, and I know that sounds all new age-y, and if you’re like me, sometimes that feels a little out there, but take it from me, it’s not. What Trina does is basically ask you questions that help you get past the stuff that’s getting in the way. She helps you think.

So, Trina, where are we finding you today?

Trina Brunk: Right now, I am in Lents, close to 205 and Foster.

Brian Belefant: And that’s part of Portland…

Trina Brunk: That’s part of Portland. Yeah.

Brian Belefant: For our listeners and Portugal.

Trina Brunk: Okay. Yeah.

Brian Belefant: And do you own a home?

Trina Brunk: I do, I do. I’m not actually current living it, but that’s a different story.

Brian Belefant: I’d love to hear the story.

Trina Brunk: Well, okay, so I move to… This is going to take this conversation in a different direction, maybe… 

Yeah, I came here to Portland a couple of years ago with my former husband and our three kids. I helped by the house. Our purpose was the co-parent in the city where he could then study acupuncture. And in the process, I remembered why we didn’t work out as a couple and decided to give myself the space away from that household. And so I still own the house, but I don’t live it it.

Brian Belefant: That is pretty cool. Okay, so I have two questions that I have to come up after this. So you have three kids. How old are they? 

Trina Brunk: They’re 11 and almost 14 and 17.

Brian Belefant: Wow, okay. So you’re right in the thick of it.

Trina Brunk: Yeah. 

Brian Belefant: And how long ago did you come here?

Trina Brunk: It was about two and a half years ago, right after Thanksgiving in 2017.

Brian Belefant: Okay, and I gotta pick up on something. You came with your former partner, were you already formers at that point?

Trina Brunk: We had actually been divorced and living in separate households for seven years.

Brian Belefant: Wow.

Trina Brunk: When we decided to re-combine households so that we could be co-parenting in the same house. We moved from Missouri.

Brian Belefant: Wow. 

Trina Brunk: Yeah. It was an adventure. I was really interested in having a new start for a number of reasons, and I also wanted to support my kids’ dad in doing something he had always wanted to do, which… yeah.

Brian Belefant: That is actually just… sort of me editorializing, I always love to hear people who even if the relationship doesn’t work out, they still support each other because obviously you went into it for a lot of good reasons.

Trina Brunk: Yeah, yeah, and I actually… For me, I think it’s really important to remember that relationships never actually end. It’s just that we transition in how we focus our energy and attention with regards to them. So I think coming at any relationship in in a way where we’re honoring that it’s a long game and especially when there’s kids involved.

Brian Belefant: That is a beautiful, beautiful thought. So at this point, do you have a partner?

Trina Brunk: I don’t… No, I am currently un-partnered actually in the romantic sense. 

Brian Belefant: And are you looking to be…? I mean, you don’t have to answer any question that you don’t want to answer, by the way.

Trina Brunk: Yeah, I’m actually enjoying dating, and part of it for me right now is learning more about what I want in this phase of my life. It’s a different phase than when I was younger and wanting to have somebody that I was going to raise kids with. That’s not where I’m at. I’m kind of enjoying exploring and my biggest priority is finding out more about myself and what it is that I really want to give and what I really want to bring to a connection that might be different than what I thought that I was supposed to. Or just kind of by default, assumed that I wanted. If that makes any sense. 

Brian Belefant: It makes absolutely perfect sense. And it’s funny –– I wanted to pick up on that too, because I think so often we do what we think we’re supposed to do, or the preconceptions that we have, and I think it takes a while for us to come to “What really works for me?”

Trina Brunk: Yeah, and that’s actually a lot of the fun.

Brian Belefant: Oh, I love that you said that. So tell me about the fun of it. What are you learning? Anything neat that you can share?

Trina Brunk: Well, I think it’s fun because I go on OKCupid, and I like to make sure that I don’t spend too much time in there ’cause it’s like a lot of clicking Nope, Nope, Nope. And that’s a little depressing. But what I like to do is make sure that I spend some time noticing what I appreciate, what I value, even if somebody is not a match for me. And this helps me build my database of what it is that I’m actually wanting and what it is that I’m actually looking for, even if it’s not all in that person that I’m looking at on the screen. 

Brian Belefant: That’s really smart.

Trina Brunk: And I’m really gaining a lot more appreciation for the fact that I get clued in almost immediately as to whether or not I’m going to actually enjoy an interaction with somebody. We have an intuitive sense about who we’re connecting with, and I don’t think this is the same as making a judgment or making assumptions, but I think we have gut feelings about a situation and about a person that we really need to pay attention to. So I’m learning about the places where I might unconsciously override a red flag in order to go after something that I thought that I wanted even more. But then to come back around and say, “Oh, that was something I really, actually needed to pay attention to!”

Brian Belefant: And you can help other people do this for themselves, too.

Trina Brunk: Yeah, yeah, and I think it’s funny how you came to your project with writing the book because you wanted to really understand how all this works well, that’s kind of a lot of how I come to what I do. I feel like I really want to understand what’s going on inside when we’re making these big, big decisions about who we allow ourselves close to and where we want to plant ourselves in the world.

Brian Belefant: Yeah. So I have two questions that came up in this, because you’re opening up a lot of doors here.

Let me finish writing down this way, ’cause I don’t want to lose it.

Alright, so the first thing that came to me is you’re keeping track of the things that you might find appealing –– I don’t remember exactly what you said it. You’re going through OKCupid, you’re looking at these profiles, and there are things that you go, “Oh, that speaks to me in one way or the other. How are you keeping track of it? Is it just filing it away in your head? Are you writing lists? What are you doing?

Trina Brunk: Well, I think it’s more like… Okay, so if I have an experience that I like, but it’s with somebody who’s not really a good fit for a variety of reasons, instead of focusing on what it was that wasn’t working, I want to make sure that I focus on what it is that I discovered that I really wanted. Because it’s like we’re all so complicated, and when I find that when I like an interaction with somebody, what I realized is it’s who it is inside of me that’s coming forward to play with that person. I like who it is that I am when I’m around you.

Brian Belefant: Wow, what is another beautiful thought!

Trina Brunk: Even more than I may even be interested in who you are. So that’s a good thing to notice.

Brian Belefant: That’s a fantastic thing to notice because ultimately that’s… selfishly the most important thing , I mean yeah, you want it to be reciprocated, of course, but wow. Who that person allows you to be… That’s what we want.

Trina Brunk: Actually, I wanna have a caveat there because, okay, so yeah, we like who we show up as around this person, but if who we show up as a hero or a rescuer because the other person doesn’t have it together, that is an important thing to notice for a different reason, because we don’t necessarily want to have that as our role in the relationship.

Brian Belefant: That makes perfect sense. Sort of the analogy I do is, a lot of people will buy a house, but it’s a fixer upper. But there is an out, because once the house is fixed up, you move on and you sell it. If you’re in a relationship to rescue somebody, what do you do when that person is rescued? Do you continue the relationship? Because you can’t on the same terms. And if you’re constantly rescuing that person, then you have to ask yourself “What is it about that relationship that you want to have?”

Trina Brunk: Well, yeah, I think that a lot of us may feel secure in one role or another. We may feel more like it’s who we are to be in charge of things and have it all put together. And it feels really vulnerable, really scary, to be the one who needs support. So it may feel safer to show up as the person who is gonna make things better for another person, when in fact, healthy intimacy might involve being vulnerable with that person. And so I think if we’re able to not get stuck in a role… And I think that’s a bigger ask… But if we can, notice the roles that we step into most comfortably and place ourselves maybe in a role that we don’t feel comfortable with now and then and see what happens, see who shows up. Is somebody who really loves you when you are a certain way, but then completely –– it turns them off when you happen to have a request… ?

Be willing to play your edges and not just… and not just inviting one particular identity.

Brian Belefant: Yeah, I like that. The way I would sort of say that back is “Be a person, not a role.”

Trina Brunk: Yeah, yeah, but that requires that you have a little bit of awareness of what roles you automatically in a knee-jerk sense, step into.

Brian Belefant: Yeah, and that’s where somebody like you can help.

Trina Brunk: Yeah. I also want to go into it with realizing that there’s nothing that needs to be fixed. Everybody is whole. And if we believe that we aren’t, then we’re gonna be attracting somebody that fills in what we think we don’t have.

Brian Belefant: You did it again. That is beautiful.

Trina Brunk: Then in order to keep the relationship, then it’s like there’s that secondary gain of continuing to not be who you are and then resenting the other person because you can’t be who you are with them.

Brian Belefant: So let me get back to something that you said about OkCupid. You were talking… And again, I’m paraphrasing something about how you have to separate your intuition from what you’re attracted to, your intuition about the person… Can you go into that a little bit?

Trina Brunk: Yeah, let’s see if I can do this. Okay, so first of all, I just wanna say that I’m totally… This is a lot… My learning edge, I’m learning a lot here.

Brian Belefant: I am too, that’s why I love doing this.

Trina Brunk: But I think when I notice is that when I find myself really attracted to somebody, it’s really important for me to understand what it is that I’m putting on them that makes me wanna go over there. Of course, not to completely overthink, ’cause then it makes it not fun. You don’t want to overthink it and then you mess up your chemistry because you were too analytical about it. 

Ask me the question again.

Brian Belefant: Okay, so it’s about separating your intuition about a person from the thing that you find attractive about the person, or recognizing that there is a difference.

Trina Brunk: Yeah, okay, so what I wanna invite you to do is zoom out a little bit and observe your attraction as part of who you are, but not all of who you are. If just the attraction is driving things, you can get yourself into a mess.

Brian Belefant: Right.

Trina Brunk: In a conversation we had a few days ago, I guided you through an experience where you were trying on different ways of using your different intelligences in responding to some questions that are really kind of designed to pop you out of your regular way of thinking. And so what I would invite is, again, a similar way of popping yourself out of your rut, so to speak, in how you approach yourself ad your life, and who you think you are and what you think you want. Zoom out and get a bigger view of what’s happening. Notice, are you aware of your breath? Or are you losing your core when you’re around this person? Are you losing your center? Are you finding it hard to focus on other things that are important? This is important to notice because in a lot of cases, it’s a trauma response when we are attracted to somebody. 

Brian Belefant: Ooh! Elaborate on trauma response, I need to know.

Trina Brunk: Okay, so I wanna maybe couch this in terms of, I am not a licensed therapist, so I’m not gonna be a person who’s gonna be able to help people with any deep trauma issues, but what I do recognize is that we tend to go after the people who are like those who hurt us when we were children.

Brian Belefant: Oh, yeah!

Trina Brunk: So that our attraction is hard-wired in a way to what it is that’s going to be harmful to us. And that sounds really scary and really potentially very fraught, and I think that when you look at the way that a lot of relationships go, you can see that it actually has been.

Brian Belefant: Absolutely!

Trina Brunk: I think that when we can notice where we’re attracted and do the healing work, our attractions can be part of what helps us go into the healing.

Brian Belefant: That makes perfect sense. And that language sounds kind of scary, and I sort of come to the same thing from a different point of view, which is, I guess a software point of view, which is that we know how to function in that relationship, and so the familiarity makes it attractive. That’s why there’s that saying, it’s like you marry your parent, I mean… You know that relationship.

Trina Brunk: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brian Belefant: I also love what you said about how you focus on what works, not what doesn’t. And that sound so very healthy to me.

Trina Brunk: Yeah, and it is a discipline because again, it’s one of our evolutionarily adaptive traits that we focus on what’s wrong. But then being these creatures of… We create from that. What we’re focusing on, if we’re always focusing on what’s wrong, we’re good at finding what’s wrong, we’re gonna create more what’s wrong.

Brian Belefant: I also think that this is something that goes… Once somebody’s in a relationship, it’s easy to take the stuff that got you there for granted and you focus on, “Oh my God, she left a bowl in the sink or… “

Trina Brunk: Yeah.

Brian Belefant: And that becomes huge and you forget, “No, wait. This is the person who accepts me for even when I’m in a crappy mood and helps me through my issues.” And I think that’s super important just to keep reminding yourself that there are so many things that work that we tend to disregard after a while.

Trina Brunk: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah. And another thing that I find is kind of funny is that when we go into the process of finding a house or finding a partner, a lot of times, and I can’t speak for everybody, but I think that this might happen to a few people, is that the person who’s buying the house is different from the person who’s living in the house. The person who’s making the decision about who to marry is different from the person who is actually living in the partnership with that person day-to-day.

Brian Belefant: Yeah, that’s a very, very important point. Because part of it too, is we live in such a consumer society that the act of obtaining something is made bigger and the act of having the thing is diminished.

Trina Brunk: Right, right. I think you may just a very, very good point there, and I think that a lot of times, it’s so easy to be thinking, I do this all the time, and I’m really working on finding the alternative, which is looking at what it is that I want to receive from the partnership without being equally or even more focused on what it is that I have to give, what it is that I want to give, and what it is that I’m not available to give.

I guess the same thing, I guess it’s a lot clearer when you’re buying a house, what you have to work with, what you’re gonna give and what you want to receive. But with a partner, I think it’s a little more foggy what it is that I have to bring to the relationship is very un-examined.

Brian Belefant: Well, I think the disservice that we get from, say, Hollywood or whatever, is that with this concept of perfect true love and happily ever after, and it’s just not that simple.

Trina Brunk: No, it’s a work of art that’s continually unfolding as each one of us is continually unfolding, each one of us is emerging moment to moment as a brand new version of ourselves, and so to expect that marriage to be a static thing is not very realistic.

Brian Belefant: But you do believe in… I don’t want to say marriage necessarily, but long-term partnership? Till death do us part kind of thing?

Trina Brunk: You know, “believe” is an interesting word. I noticed that I want it. And so, because I want it, it makes me feel happy to think that it’s a possibility. And so it’s funny, ’cause I think about… When my youngest son was a baby, I remember seeing him, he was lying on his tummy. He wasn’t crawling yet. There was a toy that was just out of reach, and he was like, all of his attention was fixed on that toy. It was so exciting to him. It was so… He wanted that so bad and he was just quivering with desire for this toy, and something clicked for me there, it’s like, “Oh, it’s like he doesn’t need that toy as much as he needs to need the toy. He needs the developmental experience. He needs to have that intense desire. It’s helping him to develop his focus, his strength, his coordination.” It’s like we’re using our desires to become more of who we are.

Brian Belefant: Wow, that’s really wonderful.

Trina Brunk: So my desire to have a long-term, committed, deeply loving, mutually beneficial relationship for me is my prompt to become more of who I believe I need to be in order to show up fully in one of those things. And yes, there’s a deep longing and yes, there’s sometimes a tendency to jump into something that might not be appropriate just because that desire is so big, but who I’m able to become as I develop the qualities, the character traits that really are necessary, if you’re gonna have that quality of relationship, that’s my work of art. And that’s what I can bring to the world regardless of whether I have that relationship or not.

Brian Belefant: Absolutely, I think that one sort of critical element –– for me anyway, this is my sort of exploration about that –– is when you find yourself meeting somebody, getting together with somebody that meets all the needs, the superficial needs, that one sort of untenable thing is… I call it trust. That you actually allow yourself to show up as yourself. That takes a tremendous amount of confidence for a lot of people myself, maybe I’m just the example for that, but when I’m with somebody who I don’t feel self-conscious being myself around, that to me tells me that we can go to the next step. But somebody can meet all the superficial characteristics and I don’t… if I find myself holding back, then that to me is the flag.

Trina Brunk: Yeah, yeah. Notice how your body’s feeling. Notice how your body responds to being with this person. And excitement is not the same as feeling safe.

Brian Belefant: Absolutely, in fact, a lot of times. It’s the opposite.

Trina Brunk: Yeah, unfortunately.

Brian Belefant: So how long have you been doing this?

Trina Brunk: Okay, well, there’s been different phases of what I’ve been doing. Part of it, I’ve been doing it since I was a kid.

I grew up, I was number five in a family with nine kids. And what happens in a situation like that is it’s very easy to not know who you are as an individual. To not know what you want. To not know how you feel. And so a lot of my growing up had to do… It became really important for me to understand who I am and what I want and how I feel. And so in my exploration, I found some very powerful approaches. Some of them I developed and some of them I found through reading and learning from other people. Ways to be more clear about who I am and what I want, and then how to… how to operate this thing. This very complicated and very rich and very full of many different desires, intentions, needs, the thing that I call myself.

And so understanding a lot of this has, over time, evolved into a skill set that I could help others with. As I get clear about who I am or what I want, I find that I have a lot to offer other people who are in that same search. 

Brian Belefant: That is fantastic. Okay, so are you… You’ve talked about this, but I want to ask the question directly. Is there one thing that most people get wrong?

Trina Brunk: I can’t speak for most people, but a lot of the people who come to me have a difficulty with some kind of incongruence between what they want and who they feel they are. And so this accounts for most of the challenges that are caused by making that decision based on what you think you want to like, or who you want to like other than who you actually like. So it’s kind of like what we were saying, or like the person who’s buying the house, they’re getting married, so different from the person has to end up living in the house or with the spouse, it’s kind of… if that makes sense. 

Brian Belefant: It makes perfect sense. Yeah. So flipping that same question around, and I feel like I’m grilling you, but I’m not… So what is the one sort of simplest thing that people can do to prevent that, to address that.

Trina Brunk: I think that what people can really do and what’s really needed is that we get really super clear about what it is that we want, what our definition of success is. And it’s kind of fun, it’s kind of one to notice what it is at the top level, what we tell ourselves we want, and then to say, “Okay, so when I have that, what does that give me?”

Brian Belefant: Yeah.

Trina Brunk: Okay, so I’m telling you that what I want is a beautiful, mutually beneficial, intimate partnership that’s really juicy and wonderful, whatever. And then it’s like, “Okay, so what does that give me?” And it’s like I notice if I’m able to really step into what it would be like to have that, I notice that I’m feeling a sense of contentment, a sense of being at home with myself. A sense of pleasure in the daily living. And so I can take that and say, “Okay, that’s what I really want to get from that,” because you know, there’s a lot of relationships that people get into that don’t give them what they thought they wanted for being in it. So understanding what it is that you want, through having what you want, and maybe taking that down a few levels, getting deeper into the core of what it is, so that way when you are making a decision, if you can use that as your north star.

Okay, so I want that beautiful house because I think it’ll make me feel more important. Okay, so if that’s where I’m coming from, I might wanna drill down a little bit more. Or I want to be with that person because they will make me look good. Again, drill down a little bit more. It’s not a bad place to start, but it’s a terrible place to end.

Brian Belefant: And do you think it’s important to do… The other side of it is, when you have the thing that you ultimately desire, oftentimes it does come with the whole “you open one door, you close another” thing. If you have a relationship that means you can’t have the other relationship or other relationships. Is that important to explore as well? Are you giving up something in order to get this?

Trina Brunk: I think that’s where knowing what it is that you value is really important. Some people are not willing to say they want just one partner, and so they’re very clear that they are non-monogamous. If a person is authentically non-monogamous and they’re trying to push themselves into having a monogamous relationship, that might not go well. And vice versa. I know a woman who loved a man who was poly, and she didn’t want to be, and she made herself stay in that relationship for longer than she wanted. And finally, when she gave herself the gift of allowing herself to not go there, she was able to choose a different kind of relationship.

Am I answering your questions?

Brian Belefant: Absolutely, in fact, you’re making a really important point, which is, implicit in that is you have to fundamentally believe that this isn’t the only possible relationship for you, that you can find the one that fits you better. It’s the same thing with houses. It’s easy, there’s millions of houses out there. If the one you fall in love with falls through, there’s going to be another one. You have to believe that with people.

Trina Brunk: Yeah, I’m hearing you say that, and I know one of the things that’s coming up for me right now is this weariness of how ready we are to step away from something that’s not fulfilling our needs.

I think it’s really good to be clear about what’s negotiable and what isn’t negotiable, and not to get stuck in the things that are negotiables, but to be really be super clear going into it, what are the most important things? So I’m not a smoker. If the person that, in all other ways, has the kind of lifestyle that I enjoy, I feel comfortable with them, we can laugh together, and there’s great chemistry. And they smoke. What of that has got to go?

Brian Belefant: I love the… I love that you say that. That’s what I try and guide my clients to, so I ask them to make these lists of what are the deal breakers? That is absolutely not negotiable. And then what are the things that, the way I frame it is, what are the things that require a compensating reason? For me, I come with kids.

The kids are the most important thing in my life. I have to be with somebody who understands how important my kids are to me, and so generally that means another parent, but it doesn’t have to be a parent. But we have to be clear that I’m not giving up my relationship with my children, and that’s important. So how can we negotiate if you don’t have children, I don’t expect my children to be as important to you as they are to me, but we have to negotiate that part of the relationship so that we’re both clear about it.

Trina Brunk: Yeah, and that that has to be just up front. So being clear about what’s non-negotiable is I think really important. And knowing if what you want is a long-term relationship, being willing to plant yourself in a way where you’re developing the qualities that are conducive to a long-term relationship. And noticing if the other person is able to do that too. Yeah, if you think you’re going to compensate for what they’re not willing to do to make the relationship work, it’s a good thing to notice.

Brian Belefant: Absolutely. Yeah. Okay, so a big question. Do you have a definition of love?

Trina Brunk: Okay, you said something about me being a little new age-y, I think I got about to get new age-y on you.

Brian Belefant: Go for it.

Trina Brunk: Okay, so I think that we like to define things, but I don’t actually believe that love is a thing, I believe that… I believe it’s what we’re made of, but I don’t believe that it’s a thing. I think it’s a pre-thing thing. 

Brian Belefant: I love that. Keep going, that’s wonderful. 

Trina Brunk: It’s fully present in everything we are and everything that we do, and I don’t believe that the concepts that we have about love are capable of ever explaining all that exists.

I definitely don’t believe that I have any kind of a handle on it, personally. But if you’re asking me what I think makes a compelling reason for being part of a love relationship, is that… 

Brian Belefant: Go ahead and answer that.

Trina Brunk: Yeah, or if being a householder who happens to love being where they live, I would have to say it’s being aware of what and who you are, and being willing to allow yourself to be fully what and who you are, and giving others the grace and the respect and the honor of being the way they are without having to make anybody or anything different than the way that they are. So really honoring that there’s something coherent in everybody as they are. And being clear about what’s happening in the space that you’re occupying so you can honor the space that you are, which is to say that you’re being the pre-thing thing, that is not able to be defined. Right?

Brian Belefant: Right.

Trina Brunk: But you’re consciously aware that this pre-thing thing is holding all of it. 

Was that a lot of gobbledigook or how did that land?

Brian Belefant: That was fantastic. What I love about that question is because no two people have the same answer and I have my answer, but that’s irrelevant. My point is that we all have a different way to answer that question, and I love hearing them all.

So… presuming that at some point when you die, you would like to have a tombstone, what would it say on it?

Trina Brunk: Oh, I don’t know if I want a tombstone.

Brian Belefant: Well, just assuming that you did. If you could sum yourself up…

Trina Brunk: You know what I want? I want this body to be planted underneath a tree. And I want what was this body to be taken up into the roots and into the mycelium and brought up into the trunk and into the leaves. And I want somebody to carve their initials on it, that tree, with the initials is somebody they love.

Brian Belefant: What a beautiful answer. You are such a pleasure to talk to!

Trina Brunk: It was a delight to connect with you, Brian.

Brian Belefant: Thank you so much, Trina. I’m so grateful that we got to connect.

Trina Brunk: Me too.